Blizzard on Cancelled MMO: "We Failed Horrifically"

[laughtrey]

people just wont realize the impact of what has happened here. Titan was a massive project and it was canceled. That I know of its the first game canceled by Blizzard.

The LFG documentary showed they had several games get cancelled before making WoW.

[Roamingstorm]

Nah. The original games in this genre by today's standards had so few players, they'd be considered 'failures'. People who actually want to play what an MMO can offer have always been a niche audience, and always will be. In the meantime, we sadly have to suffer attempts at turning the genre into something it isn't very good at by its nature.

Hopefully we're reaching the end of that particular road.

I'm afraid we're not. With the success of Destiny and Division I won't be surprised if that becomes the new "thing" for a MMO-esque genre. Daybreak (SOE) recently canned the next EQ, Black Desert I've heard great things about, but I doubt it'll get the attention it deserves. Which ends up being the other problem with recent MMOs such as Elder Scrolls Online and SWTOR, while not awful (especially now) they have such a bad rep from people who played at the start with word of mouth that most won't bother trying them. Then you had Wildstar attempt to do what Vanilla-Nostalgic people wanted, yet the same people complained about what they put into the game that those players wanted.

All in all, as you've stated it's a niche player base.

[cholobanger]

Maybe I need to remove my tinfoil hat here... But it seems pretty clear to me that Titan got cancelled because it would directly compete with Destiny, which is another Actavision backed project.

Destiny is a console-only game? How would have compete with Titan assuming it wouldn't be cross platform (which even then gives Titan an advantage).

[Ifeanychukwu]

Damn, too bad you're all so busy arguing instead of watching the video. It's actually pretty fucking cool.

[xanzul]

thats the thing about blizzard. they find ways to turn their failure into a billion dollar revenue stream. Titan to Overwatch. Huge.

This is why it wasn't remotely a concern for shareholders that Titan was canceled because they are educated enough about the industry and about Blizzard to know that these decisions don't happen in a vacuum and without a plan to move forward.

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Figured I would throw together a little timeline that might shed some light on why Titan really got cancelled imo...

December 11th 2010: Blizz officially announces Titan at the Spike VGA. An MMO that was to be radically different from WoW and wouldn't compete with it.
July 25th 2013: Actavision buys Blizzard.
August 2013: Blizzard announces they are "reassessing" Titan.
September 9th 2014: Bungie releases Destiny, which is published by Activision.
September 23rd 2014: Blizzard officially cancels Titan.
November 7th 2014: Blizzard announces Overwatch. An Arena FPS that is stated to use many assets and even maps from the former Titan project.


Maybe I need to remove my tinfoil hat here... But it seems pretty clear to me that Titan got cancelled because it would directly compete with Destiny, which is another Actavision backed project.

So why wasn't Overwatch canceled? Oh right..because you are full of shit.

[Roamingstorm]

Destiny is a console-only game? How would have compete with Titan assuming it wouldn't be cross platform (which even then gives Titan an advantage).

Not big on tinfoil hats, but it could be the possibility that Activision did a "friendly nudge" to do it for the next gen consoles as well. To tell you the truth seeing how Destiny turned out I'm kind of happy if this was the same concept Blizzard had, that they didn't go through with it. The game itself just left a horrible impression on a studio I used to respect and grew up on (Bungie).

Couldn't that be said about charities though? they use donations to run their day to day operations and pay their staff. Except nost wasn't paying their staff.

Are we really stooping so low as to comparing charities to private video game servers?

[merex760]

If Overwatch is that team's redemption project, rather than another MMORPG....yeeeeeah I think Blizzard is done with MMOs and there will never be a successor to WoW.

[xanzul]

A lot of it was spun into Overwatch. Not wanting to poison the pool prior to it's launch they aren't going to release anything on Titan until well after Overwatch is chugging along.

They likely won't ever discuss Titan in detail due to potential use in other projects or Overwatch itself.

[starlord]

I guess this might explain why they seemed to put so little effort into WoD. They were busy with their "smoking pile of fail."

[Foj]

Damn, too bad you're all so busy arguing instead of watching the video. It's actually pretty fucking cool.

It is good.

It's peculiar seeing Metzen without sunglasses, and without being completely preened. I feel like the dude has been through a midlife crisis.

If Overwatch is that team's redemption project, rather than another MMORPG....yeeeeeah I think Blizzard is done with MMOs and there will never be a successor to WoW.

Who needs a successor to WoW, that isn't WoW?

[Deleted]

Now we're just waiting for Blizzard to admit failing horrifically on making Diablo 3. And any WoW expansion after Wrath.

[Akka]

July 25th 2013: Actavision buys Blizzard.

The Activision-Blizzard merge happened in 2007-2008. What happened in 2013 was Activision buying itself from Vivendi.

[Oneirophobia]

Get back on topic, please. Do not attack other posters.

OT: I don't remember Titan being billed as the "successor" to WoW. I don't even remember them saying it was an MMO, just that it was a NEW IP, unrelated to the any existing ones.

Yeah, that kind of rustled my jimmies. I don't remember when Titan was revealed as something in progress, but I'm wondering if it is the same time WoW started to "dip."

It could be that the decline of WoW was originally intentional in an attempt to prop up Titan and get people to switch. But, now that Titan is gone they're working to reverse that train and restore WoW.

Or not, who knows.

...Aw, if Titan ended WoW, we'd have WC4.

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Blizzard seemed to be banking big on Titan by pooling most of its wow team into it. After it failed they seemed to have no contingency plan. Pretty shitty project management there.

Well, when you think you're a bunch of god-like wizards immune to failing, which is kind of awkwardly communicated in that video, you probably don't plan for it.

I think, in the end, Titan's failure might be good for them as an experience to grow from. You know, humility-wise.

[Ragedaug]

So, they are human. They do make mistakes.

Yes, the humans at Blizzard are human. Kinda makes me wonder what you thought they were. At this point I would say feel free to post any questions you have to the community at large and we can help you understand a good deal of how this "stuff" works.

[Deleted]

So, they are human. They do make mistakes.

No shit, is this the realization of a blizzdrone? Yeah, they do make mistakes, especially ever since Cataclysm.

[Deleted]

Yes, Blizzard makes mistakes. Blizzard makes even big mistakes (WoD, RMAH in D3...), but this shows that people there are willing to learn from their mistakes, move forward and correct them. The problem is that many people who hate blizzard will use this mistakes as a sign that Blizzard is falling apart, that Blizzard is evil or typical "Blizzard is lying", which is just pathetic.

Overwatch is a great game, I can't wait to play it. Hell, now that I have Tracer in HotS, I play hardly any other hero . Even some big youtubers like TotalBiscuit or Force are really excited for the game. To be honest, seeing what Overwatch is and still enjoying WoW, I'm glad that Titan failed and allowed Overwatch to rise from the ashes. I don't have time for two MMOs and I haven't played really good multiplayer shooter since UT2004...

[Ragedaug]

Well, when you think you're a bunch of god-like wizards immune to failing, which is kind of awkwardly communicated in that video, you probably don't plan for it.

I think, in the end, Titan's failure might be good for them as an experience to grow from. You know, humility-wise.

I tend to believe that Project Titan was directly detrimental to WoW, with all the resources that left WoW to work on Titan. WoW seemed to change design direction at that point, and since some of those folks from Titan came back, WoW has felt like it has a struggle with finding it's identity again with differing mindsets constantly at conflict.

That said, the failure of Titan may be directly linked to the success Blizzard has had diversifying their portfolio, so while WoW continues to decline, the company continues to grow.

[Deleted]

people just wont realize the impact of what has happened here. Titan was a massive project and it was canceled. That I know of its the first game canceled by Blizzard.

Not true at all! Thrall the Adventure and SC:Ghost where canceled too. And who knows how many they never told us about....

thrall ta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fwiW-Tdm_k
sc ghost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVsTrLW_04U

[Orby]

Its sad to see the people at Blizzard still won't admit what made Blizzard special to begin with.

Battle.net 1.0.

The original bnet was amazing. It was a graphical chatroom where kids could easily meet, socialize, and maybe hop into a game or two. The games were actually not as important. Sure, you could have played Diablo, Starcraft or Warcraft on bnet, but you could have altered the course of history and removed those 3 and replaced them with any 3 decent titles and bnet would still have made them a rabid success.

The secret formula was that Blizzard offered an amazing social experience for kids. World of Warcraft used to offer that as well, until they removed global chat, adder LFR, phasing, bodyguards, etc. They sit there and say the games were great and that's what was special. But they are wrong. And they still don't get it.

I still want to know who designed bnet 1.0 and what that person or group thinks of what has happened to the social experience in Blizzard games. Bnet 2.0 is a disaster.

I watch that video and I'm thinking. "Metzen, dude, you've just gotta go. They've gotta fire you. You don't get it. You don't understand why there was success so how can you fix this?"

way to tug at my nostalgia strings

I loved the old Battlenet feature. Good times

[willtron]

They are always their own worst critics.

Shame they can only criticize retrospectively and not turn that into critical thinking during the development period. Ah well /shrug.